No UnAuthorized Personnel
by Rin0rourke
Summary: "Anxious? Nothing so dramatic as that. It's strange is all. I lived here, for a time it was home, as much as any place is. Imagining it as a Haunted House, it's just so strange." He circled, planted his feet in the center and his hands on his hips. "Well here I am, what can you do. Sorry, as far as ghosts go I'm probably a disappointment."
1. Chapter 1

It was cold.

Kanda forced open an eye gone gritty with sleep and an overindulgence of beer. Nausea rolled through him, along with that split second of sleepy displacement. Where was he, and why was it so fucking cold?

Sometime in the night it had started raining, an insistent little drum, lightning flashed outside the windows, a silent strobe that illuminated the empty room. Twelve seconds later thunder grumbled.

Kanda rolled over and sat up. His stomach rebelled, his eyes burned, and he was shivering.

How could he be shivering? In the middle of the freaking night in a July storm? There was no air conditioning, the house was decrepit and abandoned, which was why it had been perfect for a bunch of teenage boys bound for college in too few too short weeks to break into and get fall on your face drunk. His breath puffed out in a condensed little cloud, and he couldn't quite drum up the mental capacity to be freaked the fuck out.

He was, after all, still heroically drunk.

The cold was enough to pierce bone, his lips had actually gone numb, and he licked them as he looked around. Lavi and Daisya were passed out next to several discarded pizza boxes, the twins had commandeered what was left of the last six pack and had conked out on the stained mattress some other squatter had left, and Alma was curled up like a kitten to the side of them using a corner of it as a pillow.

The trash from their impromptu party, a paint drum they had dug out of the trash in the back, an old rusted shopping cart turned on its side, and the filthy mattress were the only furniture in the whole house.

They had drug out the broken refrigerator earlier that evening to pile inside and "ride" it down the grass covered slope, which had been fun until it hit a rock and flipped. Kanda had been among the sane to wait at the base, but his phone had video. They had already been into the beer by that point.

Someone, at some point, had gone to the corner to be sick. With the nausea so sharp and thick in his throat Kanda wasn't 100 percent certain it hadn't been him.

Shivering, and really really needing to piss, he braced himself against the wall to try and pull himself up.

He got eighteen inches off the floor, the average height of a Barbie doll, when he saw it. The human shape or shadow outside the window. He froze in the ridiculous hunched over position he was in, with feet on the ground and ass and knees raised, and thought "shit."

There was fear, not terror of the kind in horror movies, but the very real very intense dread that belongs to a teenager about to be caught doing what he and everyone else knows he ought not to have.

He didn't think ghost, or serial murderer, or even the squatter to whom the stained and soiled mattress belonged. As much as the logic in movies in mocked, when you do something stupid in the middle of the night, like necking in the woods near an asylum, or breaking into abandoned houses for underage drinking, you fear first and foremost the wrath of authority.

The shape wavered, and Kanda realized it wasn't outside the window, but INSIDE the room. And THAT'S when he thought serial murderer.

Lightning arched. Brighter, closer, the thunder came faster and louder, and in that light the image of a boy became clear.

Kanda shoved off the wall and stood on legs of rubber, his pocket knife out with its distinctive 'snk.' "Who are you." He kept the now darkened imprint of the boy in his sight, listened for movement, with his other hand he fished his phone out, pressed the button to light the screen.

Nothing.

"Huuunmg" Alma made some kind of noise and sat up. "Yu? Whaswrong?"

"Someone's here." He circled the room, his cell screen a pitiful torch, kicking Lavi's leg as he passed. "Wake up." He barked.

"Uuuhg, watizit?" Lavi sat up, and just as quickly flopped back over swearing in every language he knew. "Watimeizit?" No way in fucking hell he could be hung over. It was still dark out. He must still be drunk. He should have eaten more pizza. He should have thrown up some of it like Kanda. He should have just broken his neck on the slope and died and not had to face whatever it was he was going to face.

"Someone was in here. Come on. Wake the others and let's go."

Kanda's hand with the knife was trembling and he forced it to steady. How had the boy moved so fast, so quickly? Was he some kid from the neighborhood? Was he using this place to hang out, get high?

If he had been trying to rummage through their pockets he had been out of luck. None of them had brought more money than was needed to buy the food and booze. Had cells though, and those were worth something. Small. Easily fenced.

"Sweet mother of the baby Jesus why is it so fucking cold?" Lavi shook Daisya awake. "What did I do to deserve this inhumane treatment?"

"Yu? JasDevi aren't waking up."

Probably because they were stoned on top of everything else. At least Jasdero was in an upright position. If blinking demon red stoner eyes at him.

"Fuck. Just grab one. Let's go."

"Sure you didn't have a bad dream?"

"I saw someone. Right here. You want to stick around if they call the cops?"

Alma pouted, but took his share of the drowsy morons.

They made their quick, for drunk teens, escape. It was itself an adventure. The rain that drenched them in seconds, the adrenaline, the fear of getting caught, dropping one of the twins, no one really remembers which, when they had tried scaling the chain link fence.

Kanda had been the one to throw his bomber jacket over the barbwire and straddle the top, constantly looking back at the house which led to him dropping his burden, making sure no one followed them out.

The side yard was small, the kitchen door they escaped from was open and hanging crooked from a single hinge. Lightning struck; the kind that heralded in some unfortunate event, it was a dark and stormy night and blah blah blah, Kanda found it tired and cliché, but it struck the sole tree in the yard, a fruitless mulberry with rotten wood pieces nailed to the trunk as ladder, so close he could feel the power of it against his skin.

The world went white; he didn't remember the thunder, only the toneless whine inside his head. For a moment they were deaf and blind.

They would rag on him for years after, how they got drunk and Kanda had them scrambling scared in the rain because he thought he saw some ghost.

But he had been watching that doorway, and to this day he could still see with perfect clarity. The boy, in that indistinguishable era of prepubescense where you couldn't tell if it was a tall twelve year old or a babyface teen, standing there.

He could see the short open hallway that led into the den, where some joker had scrawled REDRUM in spray-paint once possibly the color of blood now faded to a really dirty pink. It stood out black in his mind, with a new message.

_**TRESSPASSERS**_

That would have been freaky enough. If he hadn't seen it, and everything else, through the very transparent youth less than seven feet away.

He stood there like mist, like fog that you only saw if there was light.

He would drive past some days, visiting Tiedoll, and see the house through the sagging chain link fence, a little worse off, every year eroding just that much more away. The tree grew crooked now, parts of it still black. He would look at the big broken front window, no boards, no one around to bother, no one owned it anymore. Not even a bank. The image would remain, superimposed, and he would turn quickly away. Drive just a little faster.

Drive away from the run down house and its secrets, away from the ghost with eyes as grey and violent as that long ago storm.


	2. Chapter 2

"_**Welcome! You have entered the cranial vistas of psychogenesis. This is the place of no-time and  
>no-space. Do not be afraid for I am merely the vocal manifestation of your eternal dreams. I am<br>as water, as air - like breath itself. Do not be afraid. Look around, but linger not. Where I lead you will follow. Mark these words well. Ignite my anger with your delay and punishments will come your way. The trivia of your mortal lives is unimportant to me... Indeed, some may die...**_

_**You have a task: to release yourselves from this Web of Wisdom, this knotted Maze of Delirium,  
>you must enter the nuclear portals of the Electric Castle!"<strong>_

-Ayreon, Into The Electric Castle (1998)

He had the keys.

He felt a little sick, queasy, jittery nerves that he blamed on the winding, curving downward sloping road he had driven on to get here and wondered why they didn't just cut through the damn mountains like a sane civilized society. That way he wouldn't have had to continuously maneuver his truck, with its trailer hitched load, around the twisting curves of a lane no wider than a Hollywood actress' waist where the drops on one side were nose bleeding and the sheer walls on the other posted signs warning of the occasional rockslide.

Sometimes the mountains just gave a shrug and dumped boulders on your head, especially if it was raining like the gods were pissing out last night's ambrosia keger, and of course the relieved bladders of higher beings brought the plague of frogs out. They popped under his tires like water balloons.

But he was out of all that, and with luck he wouldn't be going back through for the next few months. Having outwitted death more times than comfortable in his more than 30 years of life, he avoided outright mocking it.

No. He stood on solid, if anywhere along the fault lines in the temperamental bitch that was California could be described as "solid", ground and surveyed his recent purchase.

And for the umpteenth time since he made the phone call and got this snowball rolling, he wondered what the ever loving fuck he had been thinking.

Why had he bought this place?

It had been more than ten years since that night, but Kanda stood outside in the spring drizzle and felt like a teenager.

He certainly didn't look like one anymore, time and the scowl he had made so much use of as a youth had chiseled the beginnings of character lines around his eyes and mouth, the muscles he had cultivated may have been covered by his ancient scarred bomber jacket, but his thick broad shoulders couldn't be so easily concealed. His hands were large and lined with callouses and scars, working hands that turned a key in the stubborn weatherworn padlock with only slight struggle.

His bank account was also considerably larger, with no real dent after shelling out the measly twenty thousand for a decrepit square three bedroom single bath that he'll no doubt be demolishing after a quick survey. Fuck, he hadn't even walked through the damn thing. What had he been thinking?

He hadn't been. The fact was plain enough to everyone.

How often had he driven by the place on his way to Tiedoll's, every visit, with three other routes in the neighborhood, he took this street, and studied it while refusing to look at it as he passed. Obsessed. He hadn't even realized how badly until his peripheral had caught the For Sale sign.

Now it was his, and he had no god damned clue what to do with it.

He was crazy. All the fucked up shit in his life had finally caught up with him and he had just gone crazy. Take all the power tools and sharp implements away from him and stick him in a grown up daycare center, he had lost his goddamn mind.

It was listed for sale and he had been on the phone before he could stop himself. Twenty thousand down the hole. For what? This place was a condemned notice away from a pile of rubble, if the next storm didn't do it first. That he had the money to throw away meant diddly when he was actually standing on the front porch with rainwater running in through a sagging hole in the roof. Small comfort was, it was hardly the first.

Since he had moved into that rent to own box back in sophomore year in college he had found himself the proud owner of enough ramshackle horror movie sets to fill a ghosttown. His first had been more a cop out on responsibility than an experiment of shouldering it; he had figured that if his legendary temper got the better of him and he punched a hole in some wall, well it would be less of a big deal.

No one was more surprised than he that he not only didn't punch holes or throw things through windows, much, but had put tool to hand. Punching didn't tend to fix a leak, or snake a drain, or keep a bar up in the closet from falling from the weight of his pitiful collection of clothes. Self-preservation shoved him past frustration and pride and he soon found the fixing the actual problem, the action of putting his hands to tools and building, calmed him. He had missed the simple, calming act of getting his hands down into the earth and just enjoying the plants that fascinated and centered him so much, in the mid-winter with snow hardened ground all he had to work with, he turned to indoor tasks. When he was mad or frustrated, he put that energy into the house.

With the exception of taking a sledgehammer to the kitchen cabinets, he had done no destruction.

Soon enough his college books were jammed on his scarred dumpster salvaged tables among plumbing and wiring Do-It-Yourself guides and hardware store sale adds. Before he knew it, the house was done, the yard was beautiful, and he was graduating college, with job offers somewhere else.

He had stood for some time in his house, HIS house, his time and energy and resources that had rebuilt and remodeled and refinished. He walked through the rooms he had patched and repainted, his boots on the stone tiles he had laid; run his hands over the trim he had carefully measured, cut, glued or nailed. He had wanted to put a skylight in. He had wanted new appliances. He had wanted to shrink his master bedroom walk in closet and give his half bath more breathing space. Wants, ideas, projects, his plans after graduation consisted of going from part time to full and using whatever time he has left doing what needed doing in his house.

The jobs were a surprise, he hadn't been looking, but when teachers and the local permaculture groups create online photo galleries featuring his work, there wasn't much he could do. He could curse the internet, and had done so liberally when the Stepford wives knockoffs of his town hadn't quit crawling their way up his ass to redo their yards. But the offers that sporadically wound his way were good, and eventually he landed himself a full timer far above working minimum wage in the garden section of his local hardware store and doing yard work for his neighbors.

Uprooted. That's what it had felt like. No matter how careful you were, how gentle, it was still a shock. He had been germinated in his father's house, moved from pot to planter as he grew, but he had made a mistake, he had set himself to grow in his own bed, now he'd be dug up. He had been rooted, tended, pruned and trained; now it was time to transplant. He hesitated to do it.

It was ridiculous, and put him in a foul mood upon discovery. That was the way things went. That was typical. That was life. No one more than a gardener knew that life was never stationary, never static.

Everything had its seasons.

So he sold the house, for double what he bought it for, and used that money to buy another.

He had wanted to be a landscaper, and by god he was, he was a damn good one, but somehow flipping houses had become a very profitable hobby.

He didn't see it as much different. Taking what was, neglected, overgrown, poorly planted, or just damn wasted potential, and make it into something new, something more.

Now he was back here, in the tiny yard of this piece of shit excuse of a house with its one twisted tree that never really recovered from that lightning strike. He could already tell he needed to reroof, which meant all kinds of water damage. He knew that, though the windows were securely boarded now, for years they had been left broken and open to all manner of animals and elements.

He should leave it here to rot. He should bulldoze it and build a little park, with a duck pond, or a walled garden. It was a shabby enough area to enjoy a little butterfly garden.

But he couldn't. Not yet. Not until he was sure.

Dammit!

Angry with himself he kicked the post holding the porch roof up, it gave with startling ease.

They were kids. Drunk teens looking for trouble and hoping they didn't find any. They had stuffed each other in a trashed refrigerator and shoved it down a steep slope for Christ's sake. They were lucky not to have broken their necks, or gotten sliced open by the rusty knife of a squatter. If he had seen anything, anything at all, it had its roots in the gallon of beer sloshing around in his gut more than the supernatural.

His mouth was a grim line as he turned his back to the door and glared out into the rain, a distant silent flash of lighting.

He felt like an idiot. Worse he felt like an idiot protagonist in a typical ghost story, a ramshackle haunted house, a new owner, standing there in the rain. The thunder came, as if laughing at him

It had rained that night too.

If he had been the character in some stupid horror flick the least he could have had was a rambling old Victorian, or Queen Anne, or a god damn plantation.

Instead he had a 1970's rectangle with broken windows and cracked driveway, it wasn't even wood or brick, it was cinderblock and faded peeling paint, an ugly tree, overgrown grass, and a sagging seven foot tall chain link fence.

All for under thirty thousand.

What a deal.

He still had his keys in his hand, still stood in the rain, heard only the rain, felt it drip down his face, into his eyes. His bangs were plastered to his face and he swiped at them in irritation, but he made no move to go inside.

Idiot. Get out of the damn rain.

He twisted, walked up to the door. The fucking hole in the porch roof was directly over it, and dumped buckets on him. He shoved his hair back and stuck his key in the lock.

Frogs croaking in the tall grass went silent so suddenly, he had paid them no mind, background noise, until that abrupt silence. Nausea rolled through him, thick and heavy, his body broke in chills, he tasted bile, his head spun.

The doorknob was ice in his hand, it bit like an angry animal. Fear, not life or death, not terror, but gut churning dread took hold of him. He wanted to turn on his heel and walk back to his truck. Drive to his father's. Wait out the storm. Wait and come back with others. Not alone. He didn't want to do this alone.

Nothing would have pissed him off greater or faster than that.

Jerking his hand away he stepped back, felt the instant of smug satisfaction in the _thing _intruding in his head, and lashed out with a kick to the cheap door right on its vital pressure point.

The barrier swung in, slammed against the wall.

And angry wind struck him, cold enough to pierce bone, sharp, angry, and hateful. He felt more than saw the small figure in the doorway, eyes hot smoke. Outside lightning clawed its way across the clouds, snarling thunder.

Then it was gone.

"Did you just fucking bitchslap me to little shit?" he snarled into the empty livingroom. It fucking reeked of mildew and hobo urine. He slammed the door behind him and stalked down the hallway, checking every room, absolutely **pissed. **"Go on. Throw a fucking tantrum. See how fast I get a priest down here to exercise your ass. Fucking slap at me." The insult of it vibrated through him. The invasion of his thoughts, the fear it made him feel, more than the slap of cold.

Ghostly presence confirmed.

And oh, it was **ON.**

"_**There is danger ahead, but do not be afraid. For I am with you like breath itself.  
>Darkness will lead to light - colour will bleed into the night, beautiful colours, the like of which you<br>have never seen. Let the dream of confusion lead you into the virgin light!  
>Be gone!<br>Be all-seeing, be brave...  
>Be gone!"<strong>_


End file.
